


The Diet of Light

by Jwash



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Sea
Genre: Candles, Gen, Horror, Other, Snuffer(s), oh my
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 15:56:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8719837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jwash/pseuds/Jwash
Summary: The ship Grianne O'Malley zails across the Zee. The whole crew stands ready to defend it at any cost, its lookouts are alert for any threat that might loom out of the dark forbidding waters, and her captain is resolved to combat any Zee-monster that threatens her crew.This is unnecessary. The threat is on the ship with them.





	

The _Grianne O'Malley_  was three days out of Whither when they found the first face. A zailor coming off midnight watch slipped on something on the stairs and fell. He swore and cast his lantern around until he found the offending scrap of skin, then screamed himself hoarse before he thought to ring the alarm bell and bring the whole crew running.

A circle of worried eyes peered down at it, lying crumpled in a slick of blood, none of them wanting to touch it, but all enthralled by it. The eyeholes stared back at them. The zailor's foot had given it a pugnacious sneer, like it was somehow dismissive of the faces around it for still being attached to their skulls. _Cowards_ , it seemed to say. _Free yourselves_.

On the gangway steps, the Soft-Hearted Captain and the Presbyterate Adventuress fed the poor zailor a bottle of rum, trying to calm him down. He gulped breath and rum in roughly equal measure, occasionally pausing to mutter.

“It was just there. I didn't even see it at first, it was just there,” he kept saying. “Like any old bit of bumf.”

“Yes, yes, we know,” said the Captain. “You've said.”

“Just lying there.”

She looked in askance at the Adventuress, who wordlessly jammed the bottle of rum into the zailor's mouth. The Captain stood and pushed into the circle of zailors around the face itself, picking it up and holding it out to them. They recoil in horror, one vomited, and even the inscrutable Chelonate Huntress curled her lip.

“Does anyone recognise him?” she said, her face in a wry smile.

A few zailors coughed nervous laughter.

“Well? Whose face is this?”

“Ooever 'e is, 'e's 'ad an 'ell of a shavin' accident,” offered the Estuarine Deckhand, eliciting a little more laughter.

“So it's yours, eh?” the Captain said, thrusting the face at the woman who'd spoken, making her cringe back as her comrades chuckled. Good. If they laughed they wouldn't think too much. “Well, unless someone owns up to it, I'm forced to assume someone's collection has gone walkabout.”

“Um, pardon me captain, but I think I know,” came a tiny voice from the Orphan Cabin Girl.

“Well?” said the Captain, one hand on her hip, the other still holding the face.

“It looks a lot like Mr Menzies,” she said, voice quavering. “The man you took on at Venderbight.”

The Captain felt like a shard of ice at lodged in her stomach. She recalled the man's eager, almost pitiful demeanour as he ran along the dockside after her, begging for a place aboard without asking for pay. She'd needed a few hands, so had thought nothing of it at the time.

“Poor bastard,” said a zailor.

“Maybe not,” said the Presbyterate Adventuress. “Ma'am, the Unfortunate Zailor has fallen asleep and will need carrying back to his bunk. In the meantime, I need a word with you in your quarters. Bring the face.”

The Captain nodded primly. “Go on about your business. Those on watch watch, those below get back to your bunks. And someone carry the Zailor to his hammock.”

The zailors muttered their assent and left, one woman taking the Zailor's lantern and heading up the stairs carefully avoiding the red stain on the deck, while the Adventuress and the Captain left together. Soon enough the deck was silent again apart for the soft lapping of the waves against the hull, and the distant splash of glimfall.

Excepting the woman on watch, the Captain, and the Adventuress, the whole ship was asleep. Twelve zailors, and one thing that was not a zailor, slept soundly.

* * *

“Snuffers?”

“Yes ma'am, but not so loudly,” said the Adventuress.

She had seated herself at the head of the Captain's table without a word, and the Captain hadn't said a word against it. Some might have admired their egalitarianism, while others might have said things about the nature of their relationship unfit to print. Regardless, there was tea, biscuits, and Archer's Distinguished Marmalade, the very picture of austere domesticity at sea, ruined only slightly by the flayed face in the middle of the table resting on a china plate like a poorly-made pancake.

The Captain had called a meeting of all the ship's officers which at present consisted of her, the Adventuress, and the Albino Tinkerer, the engineer they had picked up on Pigmote Island in the midst of the War of the Impossible Lamb, which was a story too bizarre to relate in any condensed form.

“Good God... Snuffers,” said the Captain, sipping her tea. “I have no idea what that means.”

“Face stealers,” said the Adventuress, her mouth drawn into a patient line. “Snuffers change face as easily as you might change a waistcoat. Other than their face, they look as human as anyone else, unless you cut them open.”

“God. And you think it might be one of these things?”

“I don't know of anything else that can leave nothing of a man but a skinned face,” said the Adventuress. “If we've found its last face, that means it's wearing a new one. It's wearing a member of the crew."

The Captain stroked her chin thoughtfully. “The Zailor was the second watch of the night, and he discovered the face. No one before then reported anything amiss. Who was on the first watch?”

“The Quiet Armsman,” the Adventuress replied without pause.

“Get him in the brig then. Shut him off from all contact, no one is to see him or speak to him, and wait until we can get to a port with a decent doctor. Where's the nearest?”

The Adventuress took a furled map from the case by the table and laid it out, weighing down the corners with cups, saucers, and the plate with Mr Menzies' face on it.

“Port Palmerston probably has what we need,” she said, pointing to the island, a forbidding black mass of contour lines indicating the steep volcano. “We can stop at the Chapel of Lights for supplies if need be-”

“No,” said the Captain, looking up. “We have enough. We won't stop at the Chapel. Chart a course around the southern tip, see if we can't avoid Mount Nomad while we're at it.”

The Adventuress' eyes flicked to the Captain's white knuckles. She looked like she might shatter the tiny cup in her hand.

“Very well. We'll sail directly for Palmerston. I'll get the Armsman under lock and chain.”

“Very good, Adventuress.”

The ship's steel hull creaked faintly, and the candles lighting the room flickered. Neither woman made a move. The Albino Tinkerer coughed.

“I should get back to the engine room,” he squeaked, scuttling off through a flaw behind the shelf.

* * *

“What's all this about?” the Armsman complained as the Chelonate Huntress restrained him with less care and more force than was maybe called for.

“You're being put in the brig for your own protection,” said the Adventuress. She had drawn her sword, but held it casual and low, as though it were just a rolled-up newspaper.

A handful of zailors watched nervously from their bunks, but none made a move. The Adventuress' party consisted of the Chelonate Huntress on one side and the Bandaged Pugilist on the other, and no one fancied intervening.

“You can't do this!” the Armsman said, bent double, both hands in the Huntress' grip. “I deserve to know what this is about!”

“The Captain doesn't think you do, and neither do I,” the Adventuress said. “For the good of the entire crew, you are being kept in the brig. You will be fed and watered, but not allowed into contact with anyone without the Captain's express permission. Now stop squirming, or you'll have an even less comfortable time.”

“No! I won't go! You can't make me!”

The Armsman struggled and squirmed, kicking his legs out and yelling. The Huntress grunted, her back to the watching zailors. Something popped and cracked, and the Armsman's complaints died off into a bubbling whimper. The Huntress half led, half-pushed him, followed by the Adventuress and the Pugilist. Behind them, the bunks filled with whispers.

* * *

The Armsman's arm had only been dislocated (a very neat bit of work by the Huntress), requiring only a little force to fix, and besides which he'd have enough time for it to heal up. The Bandaged Pugilist and the Chelonate Huntress took turns by the bulkhead to the brig, she with a long whalebone spear, he with his linen-wrapped fists. Zailors paused outside the door, but said nothing.

The ship passed Codex in silence, stopping only briefly. No one was allowed ashore but the Captain, who came back on board with a thin piece of rice paper in her stomach, its contents committed to memory. From there, the Zee stretched out into the cold dark of the North.

On the deck zailors bathed in red and green light worked, hauling, tying, swabbing, scraping, cleaning, keeping themselves occupied. Below, stokers and engineers clustered around the red hot boilers pouring coal in, every shovelful bringing them a little further into danger. All eyes looked inwards to the ship, away from the darkness of the Zee. Only the Captain and the Adventuress kept lookout, one standing by the glim-lamp and scanning the horizon with her spyglass, the other on the bridge with her hand on the wheel, keeping an eye out for dangers aft and abeam.

The Captain preferred to keep fore watch, so she was the first to see it. In the textured blackness of the Zee, it stood out as a deeper, dark, glossier patch. She fixed it with her spyglass just as the glim-lamp's beam glinted off it. For a moment, she saw every dreadful detail. Sheer basalt cliffs, cracked and lined like great black teeth, bones and debris littering the lower slopes, a ship half-consumed by the mountain so close she could read the name _Invinci_...

Without lowering the spyglass, she slammed the glim-lamp's shutter closed, cutting off the light, but it was already too late. She watched the great black mass of rock turn, inevitable as time, until it faced her ship. Of course, it was a black basalt mountain that ate ships and as such could hardly be said to have a front or face as such, but the Captain still had a sensation of being at the centre of its attention. Whatever unknowable organs it possessed instead of eyes, ears, or a nose, Mount Nomad had the _Grianne O'Malley_  fixed within them, and the Captain felt a chill spread in her stomach. Across the Zee, she heard the rushing sound of Mount Nomad coming at them ahead full.

“Douse lights! Douse lights!” she shouted, turning and sprinting across the deck. “Mount Nomad sighted!”

The Captain saw her crew's faces fall, hollow and horrified. Even the Estuarine Deckhand lost her usual grin. The deck plunged into darkness, but the Captain knew her way. She took the steps up two at a time, bursting on to the bridge.

“She's coming head on at us,” she said. “Keep on straight. She'll have trouble manoeuvring around to pursue if we run past her.”

For a moment, the Adventuress considered questioning the Captain on the wisdom of driving the ship into the teeth of Mount Nomad, but it was something she herself would have done anyway, so she pushed the engine room telegraph to 'Ahead Full', and a moment later felt the ship surge beneath her. The Captain strode down to the deck. Moonish light highlighted the gunwales, hawsers, arms, legs, and heads without illuminating them. None of the crew said a word, but the Captain could feel them, hunkered low to the deck like rabbits on a dark field when a fox is about.

“Man the guns,” the Captain said. “Load flares.”

Gun crews formed around the Cotterel and Hathersage cannons, speaking quietly to one another in the dark. The Captain wondered if Mount Nomad could hear, and if she could, whether she could understand them.

“Hold fire,” she said, keeping her voice low.

The Captain crept forwards to the bow of the ship. Over the steady beat of the engines beneath them and the rush of water, she strained her ears for the sound of the coming mountain. Distantly, but getting closer, it came softly, a shipwreck hunting her through the dark.

She glanced back to see the zailors peering forward grimly, clutching gun-swabs, flare-shells, breech-bolts, and wrenches as though they intended to repel Mount Nomad personally. The heat from the engines rose through the deck, steaming slightly in the freezing air, emboldening a few and bringing a smile to the Captain's lips. Nearer and nearer the oncoming bow-wave of the mountain swept on, rushing closer. The first flecks of moonish light glinted on the mountain's shoulders, looming over them. Then, it spoke.  
A single syllable echoed over the water, agitating it, waves cresting and crashing all around. It echoed inside every skull, unspeakable and unthinkable. The dimensions of the syllable were impossible, and the Captain felt heat prickle the back of her head as the syllable sank through her mind like a stone through a well well well all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. Someone on deck screamed, another burst into tears, a third burst into golden-white flames and something splashed into the water. The hull buckled in a dozen places as though a lifeberg had run at it.

The Captain raised her head, teeth gritted against the pain.

“Return fire!”

Two soft booms sounded as bright red flares lifted into the air, illuminating the mountain's face, maybe only a few hundred yards away. Close enough to count the bones lying on her shore, close enough to read the letters scrawled along her basalt faces.

“Hard to starboard!”

The order echoed across the deck, and the _Grianne O'Malley_  lurched to the mountain's left. Mount Nomad's momentum carried it past as the ship corrected and gunned the engines straight ahead, pistons beating with the Captain's heart. The mountain hared after the flares floating behind them as the ship fled into the dark.

Hours later, the Captain let them turn the deck lights back on. The moment they did, she wished they hadn't. Lying on the deck in a pool of blood was a face. Thick black hair told her who it was; the Flirtatious Gunner from the Khanate. The crew didn't scream or howl this time, only stared at it, before letting their eyes pan up to the Captain. She returned their stares, folding her arms.

“If there is a face here, logically there is a faceless corpse somewhere,” she said. “Two groups of three, spread out and check the ship top to bottom. Hold, kitchen, galley, bunks, fore, aft, I want that body found.”

“What about the brig?” asked a pale, thin zailor, the Marine Bohemian.

“I will inspect the brig personally,” said the Captain, narrowing her eyes at him. “In the meantime, you can check the hull, too. We took some nasty hits there.”

The zailors grumbled but went about their work. The Adventuress stood beside the Captain, a hand on her shoulder.

“Come on. We should speak to the Armsman.”

They departed the deck, the Adventuress' hand not leaving her sword hilt.

* * *

“You were right,” the Captain said, crouched in front of the Armsman.

The room stank exactly like a room which has been a man's sole bedroom, bathroom, dining room, and toilet for the past two days. He looked up at her, his eyes empty and hollow.

“I heard what happened,” he said. “The Pugilist told me through the door.”

He reached out and held the Captain's wrist, gripping it tight. She made no move.

“Let me stay in here,” he said. “I don't want to be out there. Not with all that's going on.”

The Captain looked over her shoulder at the Adventuress.

“We'll need the Pugilist and the Huntress guarding the door if he stays,” she said. “It'll be an inconvenience if we need them elsewhere.”

“Please,” the Armsman said. “You can't send me back out there, not with that thing lurking about.”

His nails dug into the flesh of the Captain's arm. She stood abruptly, one hand on the butt of her pistol, and he relented.

“Armsman, you are to return to your duties. You are no longer under suspicion.”

Never had anyone looked so distraught to be released from imprisonment. He shook his head.

“Please ma'am,” he said, his voice a desperate whisper.

“Remove yourself from imprisonment, Armsman, or I will have the Adventuress remove you.”

His hands dropped, as she stood. “Understood, ma'am. I'll be on duty.”

He excused himself, and the Adventuress closed the door behind him.

“What are we going to do?” the Captain asked, her head in her hands.

“There is a way, ma'am,” said the Adventuress. “It will flush out the Snuffer for certain.”

“Why didn't you say so sooner?”

“Because I would only recommend it if killing the Snuffer was all you cared about, to the exception of everything else.”

"Damn right I do," said the Captain. "This Snuffer is killing my crew, you're damn right I care about killing it."

"Perhaps you've misunderstood," said the Adventuress, dropping her gaze for a moment. "This course of action would demand suspension of your care for the crew."

The Captain rubbed her chin. “You're implying there would be some kind of collateral damage?”

“Beyond anything you might expect,” said the Adventuress, her face blank. “It's a last resort on the Elder Continent.”

“And what do they call it on the Elder Continent?”

“Those who know of it call it the Diet of Light,” said the Adventuress.

The Captain didn't meet her eyes, staring at the floor.

“What would we need?”

* * *

There was no sign of a body of the Snuffer's new alias, nor any trace of the Flirtatious Gunner. The Marine Bohemian suggested any evidence had been given up to the Zee. No sign of a struggle, not so much as a spot of blood marred the ship, excepting where the face itself had landed, leaving an indelible brown mark suggestive of two eyes and a mouth.

The Captain called a full halt and ordered them to drop anchor, somewhere in the freezing Zee between the Avid Horizon and Mount Palmerston. The Captain didn't appear on deck for a day after that. This wasn't necessarily unusual for captains, but her crew were nervous. The Adventuress didn't appear either, so there was no one to muzzle the loose talk on deck. Without engines to stoke or lines to cast or guns to clean, the crew idled in groups on the deck, eyes inwards in the green glow of the lamps. With the engines going cold, even the stokers and engineers were drawn up by thoughts of company.

“It's got her,” Armsman muttered. “I looked in her eyes and saw it. The Captain's been bloody got.”

“Maybe it got you, and you're sayin' vat to frow off ver scent,” said the Estuarine Deckhand.

“Why would it pick him? I bet it'd pick a pretty face instead,” said the Orphan Cabin Girl, trying not to let out a little morbid grin.

The Chelonate Huntress let out a throaty laugh.

“You better look out then,” she said to the Cabin Girl, grinning with all her sharpened teeth.

“It's academic to argue,” wheezed the Bandaged Pugilist to the Honey-Mazed Stoker. “The Snuffer could be any of us.”

“'Cept you, probably.”

“All it'd need to do would be to wrap itself in my bandages,” the Pugilist said, his shrouded face shifting under its covers. “Maybe it already has.”

“Don't say fings like that,” said the Stoker, his eyes heavy with bags. “I'm havin' enough trouble as is.”

“You ought to face up to it,” said the Pugilist. “Everyone dies sooner or later. It makes no bones to the Zee when or how.”

“Just 'cause carking it turned out awright for you dun't mean we 'ave to be 'appy abaht it,” said the Deckhand, getting to her feet.

The Pugilist cracked his knuckles and shrugged. “None of us are safe is all I'm saying, and you'd do well to come to terms with that.”

The Deckhand opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted. Two pairs of boots thumped on metal as the Captain and the Adventuress appeared on deck, both armed to the teeth

“Go down to the hold and bring the food on deck,” said the Captain. “Every last biscuit, crumb of cheese, and morsel of mushroom. I want it up here now, piled up on the forecastle deck.”

The crew hesitated. The Captain drew a pistol.

“Now, if you please.”

The crew moved sluggishly to the task, eyeing the Captain, and in the case of the Huntress giving her a solid glare. They worked slowly, piling the crates and barrels, while the Captain and the Adventuress worked in the middle of the deck, putting out a ring of fifteen long candles. The Albino Tinkerer rung his paws, scuttling to and fro nervously, watching proceedings.

Once the forecastle deck was piled high with crates of biscuit, barrels of beef, bunches of smoked fish, heaps of mushroom, and bundles of lemons and limes, the Adventuress paced over to it with a small metal drum of lamp oil and poured it over the pile. The crew shouted in horror as she took a packet of matches from her coat, lit one, shielding it with her hand from the intense darkness and cold, and flicked it on to the pile. The victuals went up like a candle, the wooden barrels and crates catching easily. Fat spat and hissed, lemons squealed as they shrivelled up, and the salt herrings curled like worms.

“What the 'ell are you doin'!” the Estuarine Deckhand shouted, shoving forwards.

The Adventuress delicately planted her sword on the Deckhand's chest, not hard enough to kill, but enough to cut. The Deckhand reeled back, blood staining her torn shirt, shock in her eyes.

“If you're quite finished, Adventuress,” said the Captain, from behind, “I think the crew might benefit from an explanation.”

The Adventuress paced around the side of the cluster of the crew, looks of disgust, horror, and anger at this sudden betrayal lit up in the yellow glare of the burning food. She walked to the circle of candles, lighting another match and touching each candle in turn.

“Diet of light. One candle to a zailor. We sit and wait until the Snuffer gives in and reveals itself.”

She gestured to the candles with her sword point. In the green foxfire glow, the Estuarine Deckhand's blood looked black.

“Take your place,” she said, walking over to her own candle, and sitting cross-legged by it.

The Captain sat beside her, hands on her pistols.

The crew didn't make a move. Whispers started up, nervous glances, muffled swearing from the Deckhand. Then the Bandaged Pugilist walked forward and sat by his candle, about a foot back from it, keeping his arms well away. Then the Orphaned Cabin Girl shuffled up to her candle, sniffling. The Adventuress watched them carefully, as if keeping mental tally of who came willingly. The zailors caught her eye and hurried over too. Last to sit down was the Deckhand, who said nothing but sat hunched over her candle, her face hidden by shadow.

“Snuffers eat candles, hence the name,” said the Adventuress, once everyone was seated “We starve until he gives in and eats his, whoever that may be.”

“I fort they ate faces,” the Deckhand grumbled. She said it very quietly, but the silence here was absolute.

“They eat candles, for either the light or the wax. Faces are a pleasant sideline.”

No one spoke. No one spoke for a solid ten minutes.

“Anyone got a pack of cards?” said the Ebullient Engineer, trying to crack a smile.

No one spoke for another half hour or so. Or maybe not. Time slowed to a crawl. The candles gave off only a little heat, and the crew could feel water condensing on their backs. Out in the endless night of the Zee, only minute sounds of glimfall and gently lapping waves broke the silence.

“We need someone on watch,” muttered the Huntress.

The Deckhand murmured her assent, but no one made a move to take up the duty. The candles flickered in a slight breeze, only the smallest breath, but it made the whole crew shiver. Far away, very far away, something groaned, a long low noise like a foghorn, or a whale in pain. Under his breath, the Quiet Armsman muttered the Lord's prayer over and over like a mantra. The Huntress' lip curled.

“Keep that to yourself,” she said, her teeth gritted.

“I do not fear that our Lord is vengeful,” the Armsman replied, seemingly to himself, “or that he is wrathful. I fear, friends, that he does not care for us at all.”

“If you think that's the worst thing you have to fear,” the Bandaged Pugilist said, “you've no imagination.”

“I'm cold,” said the Orphaned Cabin Girl.

“We're all cold,” the Estuarine Deckhand said, spitting the words.

The Adventuress offered no opinion, still sat cross-legged, her sword beside her, staring into the green candle flame. The Captain never took her eyes off her crew, watching each and every one. She tried to put names to faces; Armsman, Pugilist, Huntress, Stoker, Deckhand, Cabin Girl... Gunner? Loader? Was that one a Stoker or an Engineer? Who were these anonymous faces? How long had they walked her ship without her knowing their names? She met eyes with one, staring her down. _Who the Hell are you?_ She thought.

The fearful look in the zailor's eyes took her aback, and she realised her hand had gone to one of her pistols. She unclenched her hand. It wouldn't do to lose herself at a time like this.

The port and starboard lamps flickered and died. Someone must have forgotten to top them up with oil, the Captain thought, or maybe they'd been here so long they'd run out? Somewhere far away someone was screaming about the love of God. Something splashed over the side of the boat. A candle burned with no one behind it. It took her a moment to realise whose it was.

“Where's the Armsman?” she said, her words slurring, her mouth dry.

“Gone for a walk,” replied the Huntress, curling her lip. “I wouldn't expect him back.”

The Captain met the Huntress' stare. She'd never really stared at the Huntress, but now she did, she saw that the six-foot Chelonate woman had steely grey eyes, bright and alert like a Husky dog's. They didn't look human. They looked predatory, like she'd taken them from one of her catches; maybe a Coral Eel, or a Silver Slipper. Something hungry, and at home in the dark Zee.

“What are you looking at?” said the Captain.

“You. You idiot,” said the Huntress. “You led us here. You took on the Snuffer. You let your Presbyterate woman do this to us.”

“I know,” the Captain replied. “You think I don't know that?”

“I don't think you care,” said the Huntress. “You took the first easy solution you came across.”

“That's a pretty fine sentence from someone who grew up on a rotting turtle.”

The Huntress snorted with laughter. The rest of the crew were hunched over their candles, faces looking lined with hunger.

“Do you know how long a Snuffer can go without food?” she asked, smiling.

“Why do you ask?”

“Is it longer than we can go without sleep?”

The Captain turned to ask the Adventuress, but she didn't return her captain's look. She kept her big brown eyes fixed on her candle. The Captain turned and opened her mouth to say something about setting up a watch, but her words died in her throat. The Huntress sneered and turned back to her own candle.

Behind the Captain, something fluttered, and she heard the tiniest sound from the railings. Ice had begun to frost in delicate patterns over them. Had they drifted? Had the anchor become unstuck? Had something severed the anchor chain? Chain, chain, climb the chain.

Maybe a ship would find them. Would find a ring of frozen bodies, and of burned-out candles. Would find one survivor hidden in the hold, a survivor grateful to be rescued. Whose face would the snuffer choose then?

Maybe the Captain of that ship would be less trusting, and more cautious. Maybe they'd just sink the _Grianne O'Malley_  and save themselves the trouble.

The Captain looked up into the eyes of the Cabin Girl and smiled. It was hard to see if the Cabin Girl smiled back, because her face was in darkness. She had no candle to light her up.

Where was it?

Slowly, the Captain stood, drawing her pistol. The Cabin Girl's eyes went wide, even in the dark. She pointed at the zailor beside her.

“H-he... He took-”

The Captain's jaw hung open as she stood and drew a pistol, as if appalled at what she herself was about to do. She fired a round through the little girl's knee. The Cabin Girl screamed like a child. The crew started and shouted, but were too groggy from their personal reveries. The Captain strode over to the Cabin Girl and grabbed her head, squeezing and pulling, trying to find a seam, a loose flap of skin, where the child's face began or ended. The Estuarine Deckhand screamed and yelled, launching herself at the Captain. Fists beat at the Captain's back, even as she heard the Adventuress' stern tones admonishing them. The whole crew howled for blood. Shadows grew as heavy boots and kicking legs extinguished candles.

There was an awful sound like an unclogged drain. The Captain stepped back, the face of the Cabin Girl in her hand, staring down at the thing on the deck.

It pulsated in the green light of the last candle. It was only the size of a child, but it was clearly not meant to be. It's head looked crushed and distorted, wrinkled and collapsed. Where the Cabin Girl's mouth had been was only a line of tentacles, peeled back to reveal a tiny, circular mouth full of teeth which contracted and dilated as the thing wheezed in agony, glistening with green wax. As they watched, it began to unfold, its cramped arms lengthening, joints uncurling, its ribs visibly readjusting under its skin under its shirt.

The crew stared in horror. The Captain fired five more rounds into its head and chest, loud, cacophonous blasts. Clear fluid splashed across the deck, and put out the last candles.

The moonish light from above lit the scene a weird dark blue, and every person on that deck looked like a silhouette.

“Draw up the anchor chain,” said the Captain, slowly. “Stoke the boilers. Prepare to get us under way.”

She walked towards the bridge and paused. The darkness hid her expression.

“And swab the deck.”

The Flinty-Hearted Captain vanished into the bridge, the Adventuress following behind her.


End file.
